…is that it’s not about Parli debate, which means the actual debating will be unintelligible to anyone not an initiate of the high-speed recitation known as “spreading.” Still, I suppose I will have to track down a showing of Resolved. (Hat tip: Laure)

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As anyone who knows me can tell you, I take Halloween fairly seriously. But however elaborate the execution of a costume might be, I tend to keep them conceptually pretty simple, dressing as flashy iconic characters like The Joker or Spider Jerusalem or Rorschach. I’ve noticed among my friends, however, a recent penchant for what […]

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I’m not properly back just yet, but since I might forget, two worthwhile things: (1) If you haven’t seen the show Dexter yet, watch the show Dexter. Worth it for the opening sequence alone. (2) Even if you think a documentary about a typeface sounds like something preposterous The Onion made up to lampoon the […]

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Earvolution has released their list of the greatest fictional rock bands, and I’m delighted to see the nefarious American Medical Association from the cult-classic Illuminatus! Trilogy make the cut. On largely contrarian grounds, I’m sort of tickled to see the obvious choice for the top slot, Spinal Tap, bumped to second by Dr. Teeth and […]

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A little while back, I heard a band that introduced me to a new and particularly tragic category of artistic badness: They were exactly good enough to suck. What I mean is that they were just barely, slightly, asymptotically over the threshold of minimal talent, past which musicians are condemned to be judged by ordinary […]

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So, Megan blogged a conversation we had earlier today about “one-hit wonder” bands, and the trickier category of the “two-hit wonder,” asking her readers to come up with more instances of the latter. (Don McClean was the one that had sprung to my mind.) Many came up with good examples, but I think others are […]

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The American reports on the boom in domestic, and especially local, opera.

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There were many good spots in the Kirov’s Ring, but I can only explain the third act of last night’s Götterdämmerung as some kind of delayed revenge for the Great Patriotic War. Hagen’s amnesia potion was so effective that the Siegfried forgot not only his wife but his lines. And as for the eponymous climax… […]

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I’m always interested in seeing novel takes on the staging of the Ring operas, but while I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the National Opera’s “American Ring” so far, I’m not yet convinced the Kirov’s Egyptian version works. All through the final act of Die Walküre, between the skulls, the wriggling spermatozoa, and lighting that occasionally painted the […]

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Posting will probably be light this week, as I’m in Manhattan for the Kirov production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Met. Intriguingly, they’ve decided to give the operas an Egyptian gloss—which works out nicely, since my father, with whom I’m seeing them, is an amateur Egyptologist. (I’m glad I was born during his Roman […]

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